- Disney Abandons Efforts To Trademark Day Of The Dead - Rob Maguire (Art Threat)
- 'Brave' Creator Blasts Disney for 'Blatant Sexism' in Princess Makeover - Paul Liberatore (Marin Independent Journal)
- Anne Frank's Diary Too Explicit for School - Morgan Ashenfelter (The Nation.com)
- Liberal Groups Strike Back at Facebook - Andrew Restuccia (Politico.com)
- Costco Pays Well and Soars, While Wal-Mart and Others Pay Peanuts and Sink - Omar Rivero (Occupy Democrats)
- SOPA Creator’S Latest Bill Proposes Stripping Peer-Review from Science Funding - Stephen C. Webster (Raw Story)
- The Sad Lesson of Charles Ramsey: We Still Love to Laugh at Black People - Jamilah King (ColorLines)
Disney Abandons Efforts To Trademark Day Of The Dead
By Rob Maguire
May 8, 2013
Thanks to a wave of online backlash, Disney is withdrawing its application to trademark the term Dia de los Muertos — otherwise known as the traditional Mexican Day of the Dead holiday. Dia de los Muertos is a national holiday in Mexico and is also observed in other parts of Latin America and by Mexican communities around the world.
Disney apparently sought ownership over the phrase for merchandising purposes, such as ‘fruit-based snack foods’, ‘Christmas-tree ornaments and decorations’, ‘decorative magnets’, ‘non-medicated toiletries’ and ‘frozen meals consisting primarily of pasta or rice’, as well as for education and entertainment purposes.”
'Brave' Creator Blasts Disney for 'Blatant Sexism' in Princess Makeover
By Paul Liberatore
May 11, 2013
In this image taken from the Yahoo Shine parenting blog, the different versions of the Merida character are shown. Marin resident Brenda Chapman wrote and directed the Brave film that featured the character, whose original image was inspired by Brenda's daughter Emma Chapman. The character has been made to look more adult ahead of adding Merida as the 11th Disney princess. Read the Yahoo post at http://yhoo.it/15wywHZ
Marin filmmaker Brenda Chapman, who won an Oscar for writing and co-directing the animated feature "Brave," blasted Disney's sexy makeover of her movie's feisty heroine, Merida, as "a blatantly sexist marketing move based on money."
Chapman, a Mill Valley resident, modeled the headstrong Merida on her 13-year-old daughter, Emma, creating her as a role model for little girls. Disney crowned Merida its 11th princess on Saturday, but ignited a firestorm of protest with a corporate makeover of Chapman's original rendering of the character, giving her a Barbie doll waist, sultry eyes and transforming her wild red locks into glamorous flowing tresses. The new image takes away Merida's trusty bow and arrow, a symbol of her strength and independence, and turns her from a girl to a young woman dressed in an off-the-shoulder version of the provocative, glitzy gown she hated in the movie.
Anne Frank's Diary Too Explicit for School
By Morgan Ashenfelter
February 10, 2010
In November, Culpepper County Public Schools stopped assigning a version of "The Diary of Anne Frank" to eighth grade students after a parent complained that it contains inappropriate sexual and homosexual themes. The contested version will remain in the school's library, but a different version, shorn of the sexual language, is now being assigned.
The school didn't follow its own rules for objections to educational materials, which requires a complaint to be made in writing and reviewed by a committee before any action is taken. Instead the parent complained orally and an administrator made the decision quickly thereafter. Censorship of classic literature is nothing new in American public schools. What is particularly alarming in this case is that the version of a classic book with such unassailable literary and historical value was replaced so quickly on the strength of just one single parental complaint.
Liberal Groups Strike Back at Facebook
By Andrew Restuccia
May 13, 2013
Progressive and environmental groups are declaring open warfare against Facebook, escalating their frustration over pro-oil, anti-Obamacare ads being sponsored by Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform campaign.
A coalition of activist organizations — including MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and Progressives United — said Tuesday they will suspend their paid Facebook advertising for at least two weeks.
The temporary ad boycott is the latest widening in an already ugly rift between Zuckerberg's advocacy group, FWD.us, and liberal organizations that share the same goal of reforming U.S. immigration policy. The dispute blew up last month after two subsidiaries of FWD.us — one GOP-leaning, one Democratic — began running television ads praising trying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and criticizing President Barack Obama's health care law and his handling of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Costco Pays Well and Soars, While Wal-Mart and Others Pay Peanuts and Sink.
by Omar Rivero
April 22, 2013
It’s official, paying decent wages and treating your employees properly makes better business sense and leads to higher profits. While their second biggest competitor, Wal-mart, only saw a 1.2% rise in year on sales, Costco’s most recent quarterly earnings report showed an 8% rate of growth in year on sales, a 5% rise in same-store sales, and an almost $70 million rise in membership fees.
With their foes operating in the same economy, what explains Costco’s profound success over their supposedly powerful competitors, especially Wal-mart? Some might call me crazy, but I suspect that Wal-mart’s decision to pay its hourly employees minimum wage and cut back on its workforce while adding new stores is leading to lower employee moral, worker efficiency, and level of customer service. On the other hand, Costco pays employees well above the minimum wage, provides excellent benefits, offers their employees opportunities for promotion, and has high levels of employee morale.
SOPA Creator’S Latest Bill Proposes Stripping Peer-Review from Science Funding
By Stephen C. Webster
April 29, 2013
A draft bill obtained by Science Magazine‘s blog ScienceInsider, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), would strip the peer-review requirement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant process, inserting a new set of funding criteria that is significantly less transparent and not inclusive of the opinions of independent experts.
Smith, sponsor of the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA) that threatened to fundamentally change how the Internet works, has long been a critic of the NSF grant process. His vision of science funding is based not upon the impacts new research may have on the scientific community, but whether that research will “create jobs.” He went on to boast about how much of the House science committee’s $39 billion in agency budgets gets dumped onto nuclear, fracking and “clean coal” projects.
The Sad Lesson of Charles Ramsey: We Still Love to Laugh at Black People
By Jamilah King
May 8 2013
Details are slowly emerging from the Cleveland kidnapping case and they’re absolutely horrific. But the surprising star of the media frenzy surrounding the case continues to be Charles Ramsey, the black neighbor who initiated the victims’ freedom and whose recounting of the incident has seen gone viral.
Ramsey said he knew something was wrong when “a pretty little white girl runs into a black man’s arms.” It was a streak of humor in an otherwise overwhelmingly bleak situation. But it’s also a caricature that had also become all too familiar on the Internet. As Aisha Harris wrote at Slate, videos like Ramsey’s have become part of a troubling viral trend that’s loaded with racist signifiers; over at NPR’s Code Switch blog,Gene Demby asks if we’re laughing with Ramsey or at him. And the answer’s pretty clear: “race and class seemed to be central to the celebrity of all these people. They were poor. They were black. Their hair was kind of a mess. And they were unashamed. That’s still weird and chuckle-worthy.”
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